New baseball season brings hope...again

by Caroline Basile, sports editor

With spring training starting soon, many fans and their teams are preparing for the start of a new season.

Hope springs eternal in the hearts of many baseball fans as they root and cheer for their team, hoping they make it to October and can win it all.

As a fan of the Chicago Cubs, I have wished, hoped, and prayed way too many times that this year would be ‘the year,’ and every year, along with other Cubs fans, I have been disappointed.

Keeping faith in your team is extremely important. Being a fan, you help to represent your team. It’s your cause. It’s the reason you watch the game on TV, have a party for the big game, and go purchase season tickets.

After the Cubs lost 96 games last season and their rival, the St. Louis Cardinals, made it to the World Series and won it all, disappointment was all I felt. Another losing season, another summer gone. But, with the start of spring training, hope that this year will be different has been rekindled in me. I realize that no matter what, if you stick with your team, they are bound to amaze you somehow.

Yes, the Cubs have not done anything spectacular to show that this upcoming season will be different than the last. The good I saw was that team president Andy MacPhail resigned, and Dusty Baker and his toothpicks were not hired for another season.

I’m neutral, at this point, about the signing of several free agents, including Cliff Floyd and Alfonso Soriano.

I am skeptical of the hiring Lou Piniella as their new manager, only because I think Joe Girardi would have brought a very fresh, young view to the Cubs, of which they are in need.

Also, they gave an additional year to injury risks Mark Prior and Kerry Wood. Why sign them again, when both haven’t won 20 games total in the past two seasons?

Despite all of this, I watch every game when I get the chance. Despite all of the losing, being so close to the World Series in 2003, I watch.

I don't know if I watch because I am a fan, because I was raised on Cubs baseball, or for the thrill of the game. It's many factors, I suppose, but mostly the thrill.

Everyone who has ever been a fan of a team or a game knows the agony of watching a game when the score is tied, there’s a man on third with two outs and the count is 3-2 on the rookie kid who is still nervously at-bat. There is an anxiousness to the game from then on, and you swear on your life that if your team loses, you will never root for them again, never watch, and never buy tickets to their game. The team then loses the game, and everyone is devastated.

But you still root for them.